Wellcome's World

Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936) was a unique individual. He co-founded a multinational pharmaceutical company that included royalty and famous explorers as customers. He funded medical research that changed the way we live and amassed an amazing collection of historical objects from all over the world.

Here we will show how a boy from the American Wild West ended his days as a knight of the British Empire; how the son of an itinerant preacher became one of the largest ever benefactors to medical science; and how a childhood find of a Neolithic arrowhead sowed the seed for a collection that outgrew those of our great museums.

Henry Wellcome's life merged business, medicine, philanthropy and collecting. To cover these themes we have selected material from across our collections and linked together our Library catalogue, Archives and Manuscripts catalogue and Wellcome Images, in order to tell Wellcome's fascinating story.